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How to Define Best URL Structure for Product Pages?

I am working on my website to edit structure with help of Google's search engine optimization starter guide.

There is really good instruction to define URL structure which help us to perform well over Google's organic search. I have resolved issues regarding category pages but, I have confusion to define best URL structure for product pages. My website's product page URL structure is as follow.

I am not happy with this structure and also not performing well over Google's organic search. I am thinking to include product name or title tag in URL after root domain. But, it may create very long URL and create issues in organic search display.

Does it really matter to perform well over Google's organic search? How can I define best URL structure for product pages?

Can you suggest me best one for this kind of structure? I have read Google official guidelines and Randfish post on it. But, I have just mind set & want to get some additional inputs via this question.

Your site has 5k+ errors, 11k+ warnings. My main concern is the 4k+ duplicate pages. The issue is your pages lack content. You need to add unique, relevant, quality content to every page of your site you wish to be indexed.

I would recommend a professional consultation with an SEO. Your site offers very nice products. Your site requires a tremendous amount of SEO attention. Proper SEO can have a dramatic impact on your site's pages being index and your overall sales. If you wish to do-it-yourself, that is possible to but you have a very long way to go. Please check out the Beginner's Guide to SEO.

Hey Ryan!! Again very good suggestion to hire good SEO consultant.... I am 1000% to going to do that.... What you think about future performance of this website... ? Can I mesh up lighting industry with proper SEO stuffs? This is really big mind bubble in business direction... This is not SEO but as per your knowledge ... Does it really matter to do it in future?

Any time I work with a website, I envision what a "world-class" version of the site would look like, then work to make the image a reality.

Design your pages for a world-class audience:

- If Steven Spielberg wants to find a lamp for a movie scene, are your pages something he would want to look at for ideas?

- If Madonna needs a new lamp in her living room, would she ever look at your pages and think "wow, that would go perfect in my home"

- Can you imagine any interior design magazines or Good Housekeeping linking to your page and mentioning it?

You have lamps which show a retail price of $1000. It's not really a price thing, because you will see models wear inexpensive clothes if they have the right look. The idea is to showcase your products in the best possible light.

I thinking one solution for it. I am going to add manufacturer part number in Title tag rather than URL...

If you take that approach definitely add it to the END of the title, not the beginning. I looked at your site and your page title shows as "53927 Phoenix Copper Waterproof Floor Lamp". Horrible!

The idea of a page title is to allow users to know what the page is about. The item id really shouldn't be part of a title.

The summary of your site is, you are doing far too much too fast. You are not giving your items and pages the attention they require, and your SEO and sales will suffer for it. Your goal is to offer as many products as you can, as fast as possible, as cheaply as possible. This approach directly conflicts with quality measures.

Take one product I found on your site: http://www.vistastores.com/indoorlighting-patiolivingconcepts-53927.html

I understand the product page completely. This is one of 7k+ products you offer. It was likely added to your page as part of a database feed. But look at the URL, the page and it's content. Now take a step back and imagine for a moment you had a small, established lamp shop and this product was one which was added to your store today. Think about adding this page to your site.

The page URL would probably be: http://www.vistastores.com/phoenix-copper-waterproof-floor-lamp. The URL would be much more helpful all around.

Think about the page text. You would describe the lamp itself, maybe offer some examples of it's uses "perfect for intimate lighting in areas near fishtanks, bathrooms, indoor gardens or other areas with higher levels of moisture".

Think about the additional pictures you might provide if this lamp was just one of a few items you sold. You would probably have a few nice displays and can show the lamp in each setting.

The bottom line is, your wish to sell 15k+ products is driving the quality of your site's pages to very low levels. There is almost no unique information on the pages. If you hired someone to spend 2 hours on each and every page making them personal, adding content, etc. the value of those pages to your customers and to search engines would substantially increase. I understand if you can't afford to do it, but you also need to understand your SEO and conversion challenges you will face as a result of "speeding" so fast with an e-commerce site.

My first suggestion is to drop the ".html" extension at the end of your URLs. It offers no value to you nor your site's users. It just makes the URLs longer and less readable.

My next suggestion is to separate words with hyphens. Use /home-furniture not /homefurniture

With respect to a part number, that is a disadvantage many larger sites have which smaller sites don't experience. Do you NEED to have a part number in the URL? Does it help your employees or customers? Or can you do well with just the product name? If a part number is required, I would at least recommend keeping it down to one number. Your example of "93630" seems fine but your other example of "slpt758-f13" is not desirable.

I would also try to work on your category and product names to ensure they don't duplicate each other. /market-umbrellas/california-umbrella seems unnecessary.

To sum it all up, I would suggest the following for your URLs based on the examples above:

I personally don't think that changing your URL as you described will result in big increases in rankings on the organic search. Especially considering the work required (and the potential loss of incoming links to URLs you forget to redirect), I wouldn't recommend the change you've described.

If however, you really want to change the URLs, this is the structure I'd advice:

www.example.org/category-name/123-product-name

This allows people to cut a piece of the URL and land of your category overview page, shows them to what category a product belongs and keeps the amount of 'sub levels' to a minimum by including the id in the second level.

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